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Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel.
At Snapchat, White was expected to help monetize the company, and provide the sort of adult supervision a hot, young startup needs, not unlike Sheryl Sandberg's role at Facebook.
White leaving marks the third executive departure from Snapchat in two months.
In January revenue boss Mike Randall left after just seven months. HR director Sara Sperling left in February for personal reasons, just eight months after her hire.
White, Randall, and Sperling all previously worked at Facebook. Sperling had been at Facebook for four years before making the move to Snapchat, helping with Facebook's diversity initiatives. Randall, Snapchat's vice president of business and marketing partnerships, was the global director of Facebook's PMD (Preferred Marketing Developer) program. And White had been a high-profile Facebook executive responsible for bringing advertising to Instagram.
It's certainly not unheard of for some executive shuffling to occur at startups like Snapchat. But, as Re/code's Kurt Wagner and Kara Swisher point out, it raises a red flag when so many high-profile executives depart around the same time.
Snapchat has been in the news recently for more positive news - we learned this week that Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba is planning to invest $200 million in Snapchat at a $15 billion valuation, and Snapchat rolled out its new Discover feature just two months ago - which makes the executive exodus more confounding.
Snapchat confirmed White's departure to Business Insider with the same statement that it issued to Re/code:
"Emily is a talented executive and we thank her for her many contributions to Snapchat."